The Very Old New Man
by TheColdFlame
Summary: He was old, so very, very old, and he had seen so much with his old, old eyes and he didn't want to see anymore, and he had felt the pain of a thousand broken hearts, and he didn't want to feel any more.


**The Very Old New Man**

_I've had so many different faces_

_So many different personalities_

It was the end. He hated the end; and this one was so much worse than normal. This one made him wish that it was the end for good; that he wasn't going to wake up again brand new when the light faded. This one made him wish it really was the end, for once. That or that it would just _finish_, and _quickly_ because oh it _hurt_ and why couldn't it just be _over_?

He could feel himself healing, oh so slowly, the torn skin of his stomach knitting back together, but not the same as it was before- new. New skin on a new stomach for a new body. Sometimes he hated new. New teeth and mouth and legs and arms and _hair!_Oh how he hated new sometimes.

And it wasn't only that he was new, it was what being new meant. It was that if he was new something terrible must have happened to bring him to that point, and when something terrible happened to him that almost always meant that something terrible had happened to whoever he was with at the time.

_Amy and Rory_, his mind supplied, nut not, they were safe in their home together, busy being in love. _River_? He questioned, no, no he had said goodbye to River years ago and the Library had come to pass now, just like her. _No one_, he thought, and that was true this time wasn't it? He was and had been alone, and that was what made this change to hard.  
>He <em>hated<em>being alone.

Oh please I don't want to wake up.

But he did wake up, he _always_woke up. And he woke up lying on the new TARDIS floor in his old, ill fitting clothes, residing in his new body, feeling so old. Oh wow he felt so old and withered and empty, like he was a shell on a beach that had been used by too many crabs. Except he wasn't the shell, he was the crab, a crab that could no longer see the beauty in his new home and a crab who was just getting so tired of moving. So tired of everything.

There was a time, in his old body, when he had been convinced that his time was finally coming to an end, and he had been ready for it; welcomed it. And then he had looked into the eyes of all the people he was going to leave behind and seen the future that would come for them if he did leave and decided that no, he would not let his friends suffer because he left. And so he had done everything he could to stay with them, attempted the impossible and succeeded despite what he knew that meant for him, despite the endless hurt he knew he would always feel, and the constant need to just close his eyes and sleep, and never wake up again.

He was old, so very, very old, and he had seen so much with his old, old eyes and he didn't want to see anymore.

Now that was a thing that never became new, no matter what happened to his body his eyes, although they may change colour and size, always looked so, so old. He always looked as though he had seen too many things for one so young, or that he was a very old man stuck in the wrong body. Well he had seen too much, no matter his age, he had seen so much terrible things and he did not want to see any more. He did not wish his old eyes on anyone, for they would surely cry after feeling the pain of a thousand broken hearts. Most could not stand the breaking of just two, and he had surpassed his own two broken hearts hundreds of years ago, and the crack of hundreds of broken hearts.

When he finally stood, after laying on the floor for what seemed like an age, he did his best not to touch his body, not his hair or his face or his hands, and he tried his hardest not to catch his reflection on anything. And he made his way slowly to the TARDIS controls and dialed- with much less enthusiasm than usual- a set of very familiar co-ordinates and an un-specific time and wished very hard that the TARDIS would take him where he wanted to go for once, and not where she thought he needed to go. Maybe this was where he needed to go, he hoped it was.

He needed to see a very old friend; someone who had been there longer than all the rest and that he knew would always be somewhere, no matter when it was. He needed to see his fixed point, the man who would never die and would never die on him. The one person in the entire universe who he knew, despite his questionable personality and unhealthy flirtations, would, through no fault of his own, always, _always_ be there.  
>Jack.<p>

It wasn't that he and Jack were great friends, though they should have been, but just that he was _Jack_; Captain Jack Harkness, and he would forever be.

So there he was, back on Earth, it always came down to Earth, standing in Cardiff, trying to gain Jacks attention so that he would let him into the TORTCHWOOD base. That or so that Jack would at least come out, and he did, eventually, wearing the same clothes he always was. That, at least, made him smile as he looked down at his own ill-fitting, beloved tweed jacket and scuffed boots.

"Is that you?" Jack asked uncertainly and he smiled softly; Jack always recognized him.  
>"It's me Jack," he confirmed,<br>"Oh," Jack replied, "Well..." and Jack looked him up and down carefully, frowning at his clothing but nodding his approval in the end. "The new you is good," he complimented, grinning inappropriately, he ignored it.  
>"I wouldn't know," he said, "I haven't looked."<br>"You haven't looked?" Jack asked incredulously,  
>"I haven't looked," he echoed.<br>"Why not?" Jack asked the only question that seemed to matter at that moment; it wasn't.  
>"I don't want to know," he told him, "There have been so many different me's that I'm putting off seeing this one. The last one."<br>"The last one?" Jack repeated,  
>"The last one," he agreed.<br>"Oh," Jack murmured softly, staring in wonder at him. "You should look," Jack told him, "You'd like it," he reached up and touched his hair lightly; "You're finally ginger." And so he turned around to look at himself in the reflective metal waterfall behind him and smiled.  
>"So I am," he said softly, reaching up to touch his hair. His short, floppy, flaming red hair; "<em>Finally<em>."

_I used to be old, but now I feel young_

_'cause I was a boy when I learned how to run_

**_-Teenage Rebel- Chameleon Circuit_**

**__Please Review x  
>Josi <strong>


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